Sunday, June 26, 2016

This week coming up is going to be crazy. It's full of hello's and goodbye's. Sister Yau is leaving me tonight to go to the MTC tomorrow. Sister Dolben is leaving on Thursday to go home because she finished her mission. Transfers are this week so this Thursday I will be getting a new companion. And from now until Thursday morning, I am going to be in a trio with the Tin Sau sisters which includes Sister Leonard and Sister Viazzo. And so the Sister Leonard and Sister Shiffert adventures continue! So that's all the updates on all my companions for the week lol!

I am so sad Sister Yau is leaving me! I have had so much fun serving with her and I hope she has too. She has grown so much in the past month and I am so proud of her! When we are teaching lessons, she constantly amazes me. She works so hard and is so obedient. She tries her best at everything and teaches like a pro. She loves the people we teach and truly has high hopes for them. She has the motivation to do well and desires to overcome her weakenesses. No one is perfect, but she was a great companion. She has truly set an example for me. I was her trainer, but I feel like she trained me more than I did her. Being a trainer has definitely made me learn and grow, and I am so grateful the Lord gave me the opportunity to serve with Sister Yau. It's different being with a companion who doesn't know anything, but it's also rewarding. I wish I could finish training her, but I have no doubt that she will be an amazing missionary in London!

We also have a new investigator named Alice who is a turnover from the Yuen Long 2 elders! We have been waiting for about a month to meet her so I was so excited when we finally did yesterday. She is super sweet and has a lot of interest and potential. It was a little weird teaching an investigator though because we haven't taught one in so long! At least with less actives, they have heard the doctrine at least once before, but for investigators, this is all new to them so you especially have to make sure you teach very simply and clearly. that's good for me though because I am forever trying to simplify my teaching. Alice took the lesson well though and is willing to do what it takes to learn more about our church and gain a testimony. I'm so grateful we can teach her!

Also, the miracle of the week: our less active Jessie came to church!!!! I was SO excited to see her! We have been working on getting her to church for 6 months and she finally made the decision herself to go. She told us a couple weeks ago that she was going to come yesterday and she was very definite when we confirmed she would. She had a bad experience in the past in a different ward that made her go less active so she is scared of the members. But because she came yesterday, we were able to show her Yuen Long 1 Ward is awesome and nothing like her old ward. I love our ward and I love Jessie!

I hope all of you have an awesome week! Enjoy summer while you still can! I love you all!

Scripture of the Week: Mormon 9:21 If you believe in Christ and doubt nothing, you will receive an answer and blessings.

Quote of the Week: God isn't a vending machine so you can't go to Him only when you want something. You have to continuously build your relationship with Him through daily prayers of gratitude.

Sister Maggie Shiffert

We ate dim sum with a member last Monday and it was so good! People couldn't believe I've been in Hong Kong and haven't tried it before.

Our last district photo together!

We have limited opportunities left to get McFlurries together so it called for a selfie :)

Monday, June 20, 2016

Happy (Belated) Father's Day to all the fathers out there! I hope all of you have a great Father's Day and felt loved by all of those around you! I love my Dad so much! He is always so caring and supportive and has always been there to give me advice or help me with anything I may be facing. I'm so grateful to have my dad in my life! I love you Dad!

So much excitement has been going on this past week. For starters, Sister Yau got her visa last week so she is going to be leaving me next Monday! What?! I just got her and now she's leaving me :( It's okay though. The Lord has some bigger and better plans for her in England. Sister Yau is doing awesome though! I have really enjoyed serving with her and I hope I (and the Lord) have trained her well. She takes what she learns in our trainings and tries to apply them in the lessons we teach that week. She is slowly overcoming her fear of talking to people on the MTR and light rail. Even today she started to talk to someone on her own and gave them a flyer. I was so proud! She knows what she needs to work on and tries her best.She has charity towards our less actives and investigators though and is really positive when we find a potential on the street. For only being in the field for a couple of weeks, Sister Yau is doing great! I'm going to miss her so much!

Also, we had a nice Father's Day surprise. We all wake up and I'm in the middle of praying when I hear Sister Yau yell, "I need help!" I had no idea what she was talking about but then I walk outside our bedroom and there's an inch of water on the ground! Our whole apartment was flooded! In the middle of the night, a pipe that connects to our washer broke so it was spewing water out like a fire hydrant. We finally got it to stop but then we had the mess of cleaning up the inch of water on the ground. It's times like these when we needed our dads! We managed though. We got out the mop and some plastic containers and started to scoop up the water into buckets. It took about an hour but we finally got most of the water up. About 30 minutes into cleaning, the doorbell rings and it's the security guards. Apparently the neighbor notified them that water was in the hallway.So not only did we flood our apartment, but we also flooded part of the hallway. Oops! Needless to say, we had a very eventful Father's Day! All is well though, the water didn't damage anything too badly and someone came to fix the pipe this morning (They turned off the water yesterday to prevent any more flooding but it got turned back on last night so we still had some water for showers and stuff, just not washing clothes).

I hope all of you have a great week this week! I'm out of time, but I'll share more about how the work is going in my email next week. I love you all!

Scripture of the Week: Matthew 6:8 The person we can always go to for anything and everything is our Heavenly Father. He is the best Father.

Quote of the Week: We believe that far from being superfluous, fathers are unique and irreplaceable. (Elder D. Todd Christofferson)

Sister Maggie Shiffert

This was an unexpected surprise to wake up to...

​When your apartment has an inch of water literally everywhere and you have to start scooping it up with buckets and plastic containers...

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We celebrated our 8 months on our mission and 6 months in the field! Crazy how fast time goes by!

We made brownies for English. Can you tell the culture differences between us? Haha!

We taught English class in a new location this week, and these are all the people that showed up!

Monday, June 13, 2016

So this week had another surprise in store for me: Sister Dolben got transferred! :( She is now in Cheung Sha Wan which is where Sister Redd went when she left me. I guess I am just going to be sending all my companions to Cheung Sha Wan haha! This was a total shock to us. She is going home in 3 weeks so it's crazy that she would move to a new area for such a short amount of time. It turns out this was an emergency transfer because one missionary went home early and it made more since to take someone from our trio than to make another trio and move everyone around. I was personally not mentally prepared for this for another 3 weeks when she would go back to England. Now I am senior companion and training Sister Yau by myself. All I can say is prayers are a blessing if we ask in faith.

I miss Sister Dolben so much! We had some crazy memories together, and she is an amazing missionary. The work never went as expected, but we worked so hard. We may not have immediately seen the rewards of our efforts, but I know we have planted lots of seeds in people's hearts that future missionaries will be able to build upon. Now Sister Yau and I are going to continue to help the work progress in Yuen Long!

I haven't talked much about the work lately, but we had a huge miracle this week. Remember our golden investigator Jasmine? Well she disappeared in the middle of March. We haven't been able to get in contact with her since we last saw her. We have been trying for the past 3 months to call and text her every week, but we have never gotten a response. We had some time to go finding and I had the feeling to go to visit Jasmine's house. She has a gate in front of her house so you can't know knock on the door and every time we've been, no one's been home. I thought this prompting meant Jasmine would be home this time. Turns out she hadn't come home from work yet, but one of her relatives was there. He didn't say much to us, just that Jasmine was at work and to leave a note for her. I was feeling a little down because I thought for sure we were going to see her. Sister Yau texted her in Chinese (the upside of having a Hong Kong-ian as your companion!) and Jasmine answered within minutes! What?! Huge miracle! However, it was bittersweet because she told us to stop trying to find her. It honestly made me sooo sad to read that because all this time I had hope we would be able to teach her again. It's ok though because now we know. I know she will get baptized one day. Her testimony was too strong not to be. Future missionaries are going to be so lucky to find her again. We will continue to pray for her though. I know the Lord has something special in store for her.

I hope all of you have a great week! Talk to you next week!

Scripture of the Week: Mosiah 2:23-24 We are forever indebted to Heavenly Father for all of our many blessings. All he expects of us is to drraw closer to Him and strive to become like him.

Quote of the Week: We can't be perfect, but we can progress (Elder David A. Bednar)

Sister Maggie Shiffert

Our last photo apartment photo with Sister Dolben! 7 sisters in one apartment.... I think that's a record!​

Sister Yau and I had some fun doing tie-dye at an activity a member was having.

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Two sisters had birthdays so we went to Kowloon last Monday to celebrate :)​

Monday, June 6, 2016

This week has been busy but good! Training is going really well. My trainee is named Sister Yao and she is going to be serving in the visitor center in London! She was called Mandarin speaking but she will also be speaking Cantonese and Enlgish, so we are going to help her with her English while she's here. Sister Dolben can teach her how to understand the British accent. No wonder she was put in our companionship haha! Sister Yao is so cute. I love her! She hasn't been to the MTC yet so she doesn't know anything about missionary work but she's doing awesome. She's not afraid to speak up in lessons and is willing to learn and try new things. She's always happy and easy to be around. She studied for a year at BYU-Hawaii so her English is really good which is a relief for me. It's weird only being able to understand half of what your companion is saying, but I'm getting there! Sister Yao is definitely going to help me improve my Cantonese so mhsai daamsaam (Cantonese for "no worries")! It's different being in a trio because you have to balance out lessons a little more and having three people approach one person when finding/street contacting can be a little intimidating, but we are getting along great and having fun.

We also officially have 6 stakes in Hong Kong now! We had the special meeting yesterday, Yuen Long didn't change stakes, but Castle Peak Bay and Butterfly are in a new stake now. They had the main event in the Wan Chai church building (that's the biggest one so more people could go there) and then they broadcasted it to all the other stake centers. It was exciting to see all this change happening. The work is growing! A majority of the time we get rejected and feel bummed out sometimes, but we actually rarely see the fruits of our labor. As missionaries, we plant sooo many seeds and don't even know they've taken root. Clearly a lot of the seeds planted long ago have grown and flourished. That is why we have been able to create 2 new stakes. I just keep reminding myself that no effort is wasted. I may not see the results of everyone I have talked to, but I know I've planted seeds for future missionaries to nourish.

I hope all of you have a fantastic week! Enjoy the summer ans stay cool! I love you all!

Scripture of the Week: Moroni 7:45 If you develop charity, you also develop faith, hope, patience, and diligence. It's impossible to develop one Christ-like attribute without developing other attributes.

Quote of the Week: Love is making space in your life for someone else (Sister Neill F. Marriott)